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| ==Layout 14== | | ==Layout 14== |
| Avenged, who left the website 10 months ago, returned to Zelda Dungeon at the launch of Layout 14.0. The layout that was launched was originally intended to be released for Avenged's own Zelda website, Zelda Chronicles. After various issues came up with Zelda Chronicles and some influence from Mases, Avenged decided to come back and once again merge Zelda Chronicles into Zelda Dungeon.
| | {{Main|Zelda Dungeon:Layout 14.0|Layout 14.0}} |
| | | Launched on May 14th, 2007, the new layout marked a new path for Zelda Dungeon, with a return of a quick links navigation system, and a two sidebar layout. Viewership at the website began to grow rapidly with a renewed focus on site and video walkthrough content. With the release of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass|Phantom Hourglass]]'' in October of 2017, the website broke viewership records that had stood for over two years. This marked the first time in website history that coverage and game guides for a brand new Zelda game were being published in close proximity to a games release. |
| The layout had a few notable differences than any previous Zelda Dungeon based layout, one of them being the color scheme. The tan color offered a fresh look to Zelda Dungeon. This marked the first layout in Zelda Dungeon history that went away from the standard two navigation bar system. While there were still two navigation bars on the website, they were both arranged on the right side of the layout. This also marked the return of a quick links navigation system for all of the Zelda. When the viewer scrolled their mouse over the game menu at the top of the layout, a small drop down menu would pop up, allowing the viewers to quickly navigate to a specific game page, without having to go through the game index page. These drop downs did not have a complete listing of every game guide, as it was believed that the menus would appear too bulky. Instead, they had links to the more popular pages for the particular games.
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| Content during this layout began to really thrive, starting with the continuation and completion of the Legend of Zelda Video Guide. The success of the Video Walkthrough, led the Zelda Dungeon YouTube account to reaching nearly 150 subscribers by August 6th, 2007. Additionally, Caleb began working on the Majora's Mask site walkthrough. Before Caleb joined the Zelda Dungeon staff, he had already completed a Majora's Mask text guide, in a style similar to what would be accustomed to what is found at gamefaqs. Caleb began transitioning the text guide into a site walkthrough, complete with screenshots and artwork, all in a well displayed form with boxes keeping things informative and organized. This new style of walkthrough was the foundation for future walkthroughs, and was a drastic upgrade to the previous styles that Mases created.
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| Since Cartoons left the website earlier within the year, the Zelda Dungeon Forums were becoming neglected by Mases and security upgrades for the forums phpbb software were ignored. Mases was disgusted with the direction that the forum was going, as the forum was becoming more focused on forum word games, textual role playing games, and more controversial mature discussion. None of which had much to do with Zelda Dungeon or the Legend of Zelda series.
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| On July 27th, due to poor handling of security by Mases, the Zelda Dungeon forums were hacked into. Later that day, Mases made an announcement about the hacking and removed the forums from the website. In subsequent announcements, Mases claimed that the hacking was irreversible and that the data from the php forums was gone forever. However, this was not entirely true, as both Mases and former staff member Cartoons, had database backups that could have been restored to just a few weeks prior to the hacking. Mases chose not to pursue this route and made the forum appear as if it was gone for good. Mases had long term goals of restarting the forums with new forum software and a fresh slate. On the 28th of July, Mases made an announcement that the forums at a then affiliate website Zelda Legacy were to become the new temporary home of Zelda Dungeon until further notice.
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| On August 19th, 2007, Zelda Dungeon celebrated its 6th birthday with tons of new game content. On this one day, multiple completed guides and portions of walkthroughs were all updated, including several new videos. This marked the single biggest update in terms of content in any single day at Zelda Dungeon. An even bigger update was planned but Avenged was not able to contribute content to the website at the time. Avenged soon had aspirations of resurrecting his own website, Zelda Chronicles, and shortly after the sites birthday, Avenged left as a webmaster of Zelda Dungeon once again. Avenged has since gone on to create a successful Dragonball fan site known as Dragonball Legends, as well as bringing back Zelda Chronicles once again.
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| Just days after the sites birthday, Caleb was rewarded for his hard work and dedication by officially being promoted to a Webmaster position on August 28th, 2007. Just days later on September 2nd, 2007, Caleb completed the Majora's Mask site walkthrough as well as all other Majora's Mask game pages. He also completed the text only version, which subsequently launched the Zelda Dungeon GameFAQs account, where the guide has since received a star rating. The site walkthrough was miles ahead of any previous guide put together at the site and was the new standard for game guides. Multiple other content projects were in the works, but all were put on hold by the imminent release of Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS.
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| On September 26th of 2007, the first pieces of Phantom Hourglass content were being released for the site, five days before the games launched in the US on October 1st. Just a week after the launch of the game, the first pieces of the site walkthrough were put online and visitors quickly began to flood in as there was high demand for a guide for the newly released game.
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| On October 6th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon broke its single day visitor mark of 3159 unique visitors, a mark that stood for nearly 27 months. The 6th of October recorded 3472 unique visitors, and this record was subsequently broken a number of times in the coming weeks and months. Prior to this month, the site only reached over 2700 visitors on 4 days in site history. From this point until today, the site has never dipped below 2700 visitors.
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| On October 16th of 2007, Zelda Dungeon launched a brand new Forum, this time abandoning the old phpbb software, and switching to mybb. The forums were created by Mases, with the support of former webmaster, Cartoons. The forums began to immediately pick up a fan base, many joining to discuss the recently released Phantom Hourglass, while others joining from the old incarnation of the forums. The forum was drastically different than the previous incarnations, as at the time of launch it exclusively featured site and Zelda material, and did not have any features that were popular at the old forums, including a general discussion, role playing area, forum text game area, or a mature discussion. Mases received harsh criticism by some members of the old community at the time of this, but Mases stayed the path during the early months of the forums life, and many of the long time Zelda Dungeon members left the community.
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| ==Layout 15== | | ==Layout 15== |